Law now entitles all workers in S.F. to paid sick leave

Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Huber Herrera coughed into his sleeve. He ran over to a trash can to dispose of some tissues. He no longer had a fever, but he'd had one over the weekend when he showed up for his shift in a downtown San Francisco restaurant

"Even now, I'm sick and having to go to work," said Herrera, a 46-year-old prep cook, speaking at a news conference Monday marking the start of San Francisco's new paid sick-leave law.

The law was approved by 61 percent of San Francisco voters in November.

The first such law in the country, it requires all businesses to provide paid sick leave to employees who work within the city.

Business groups have criticized the law as one in a series of mandates -- including a citywide minimum wage and a new health insurance requirement -- that will make it hard for small retailers and restaurants to survive in the city.

But labor advocates say that sick leave should be a basic human right and that the San Francisco law has already fueled a movement for paid sick leave in other cities and states.

Lawmakers in New Jersey and Washington state, for instance, recently introduced similar bills. And Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., will hold a committee hearing next week on a similar federal proposal that he has raised unsuccessfully in the past.

"The people of San Francisco created a watershed moment for working families," Kennedy said in a written statement.

"Paid sick leave laws are now being taken very seriously around the country," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that supports paid sick leave. "San Francisco is not going to be alone for very long."

Although relatively few small businesses were aware of the law when it was passed, word spread rapidly as Monday approached.

Over the past two weeks, the city mailed informational notices about the new law to more than 100,000 businesses. And the municipal office in charge of enforcing the law received 137,301 hits on its Web site in January -- up from 21,000 a year earlier.

Businesses geared up to begin tracking and accruing sick leave. The law requires companies to provide one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, with a cap of either 40 or 72 hours of leave, depending on the size of the business.

For some businesses, the law means major changes.

Delfina -- an Italian restaurant with 73 employees in the Mission District -- hadn't provided any formal vacation or sick leave to its non-management employees.

Delfina's chef/owner Craig Stoll said he is less worried about the financial impact than about whether employees will abuse the law by skipping shifts without justification.

"If we're short a person, we go down in flames," Stoll said. "It just doesn't work, like a wheel missing a spoke. For people to not come in and take advantage of this in a wholesale way would be disastrous."

The law will bring much less of a change to Palio D'Asti, an Italian restaurant in the Financial District. Chef/owner Dan Scherotter already gives workers a minimum of four sick days and five vacation days; he is complying with the law by reclassifying all that time as sick days.

But Scherotter said the law nonetheless will raise his costs by 3 percent because it also applies to his vendors.

"My cost of meat will go up, produce will go up, janitorial service will go up," he said. "It all gets passed on to me, and I'll have to pass it on (to customers) in higher prices."

To employees like Herrera, the new law is long overdue.

Herrera didn't get any sick leave when he worked at the Cheesecake Factory for two years. And until now he hasn't received sick leave at his current restaurant, which he declined to name.

Naomi Nakamura, a college student who joined Herrera at the press conference in support of the law, didn't get any sick leave, either, when she worked for a small video rental store.

"One of my co-workers who couldn't afford to take time off came in to work with strep throat, so I caught her strep throat," said Nakamura. "One time I had a fever of 103 for five days. I lay there worrying about paying for rent, food and medical bills because I didn't have any money coming in ... This law alleviates a problem that I and 116,000 other workers in San Francisco face."

Although the law has taken effect, city officials are considering a proposal by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd that would give business owners a little breathing room while the city irons out details.

"We need guidelines for enforcement, and we haven't had a chance to promulgate those yet," Elsbernd said. "For instance, say you have a messenger company based in San Mateo that makes some deliveries in San Francisco. How do you account (for sick leave accrual) for the hours they spend delivering in San Francisco?"

If Elsbernd's proposal is approved, employers would still have to accrue and track sick leave as of Monday. But they would not have to pay employees for any leave taken until June 5, when they would write a lump-sum check. They also would be exempt from any financial penalties (for instance, for not tracking employees' sick leave) until after June 5 if they were making a good-faith effort to comply.

The sick leave law is one of three laws that have put San Francisco at the cutting edge of local labor standards:

-- In 2003, voters required all businesses in the city to meet a local minimum-wage standard, which now is $9.14. Only three other cities in the country -- Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Washington, D.C. -- have a local minimum wage.

-- Last fall, voters approved the sick-leave law that took effect this week.

-- In July, the city will start phasing in a new requirement that companies with 20 or more workers spend at least $1.11 per hour per employee on health coverage.

Advocates say these laws are essential if low-wage workers are to survive in a city as expensive as San Francisco.

"This (sick leave) law benefits a lot of us you don't see: We work nights, we work early shifts, we work the back of the house," said William Sable, a night-shift Safeway worker and union activist.

But business groups say the combined effect of these laws will be to push small employers out of business.

"Take movie theaters," said Stephen Cornell, owner of Brownie's Hardware and a board member of the San Francisco Council of District Merchants. "You can go to the theater at West Portal, or a theater in Daly City. You can actually make an argument that labor costs are twice as high in West Portal as Daly City. Yet we are in this very competitive environment."

What's in the groundbreaking law

-- All employers must provide paid sick leave for staff members working in San Francisco. That includes full-time, part-time and temporary employees as well as domestic employees, such as part-time housecleaners and nannies.

-- Paid sick leave began to accrue on Monday or, for employees hired after that, 90 calendar days after their first day of work.

-- Employees accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours they work.

-- Businesses with fewer than 10 employees have a cap of 40 hours of accrued paid sick leave per employee. At businesses with 10 or more employees, the cap is 72 hours.

-- Employees may use their paid sick leave not only for their own illnesses but to care for family members, including registered domestic partners.

-- If employees have no spouse or registered domestic partner, they may use their sick leave to care for an unrelated "designated person," such as a roommate or neighbor. Employees must be given an opportunity to designate this person once every year.

-- Employers may require workers to give "reasonable notification" of absences for which paid sick leave will be used.

-- Employers may take "reasonable measures" to verify that employees are using their leave lawfully. It is not considered reasonable to require a doctor's note for all absences.